Thank you fellows for the insightful exchanges. All I can say on this topic is that John almost normally used a direct and frank approach to convey his feelings and opinions onto music. Regarding the other Beatles, I guess Ringo´s lyrics are also normally straightforward and clear on the subject matter. As for Paul´s and George´s, they favor indirect, ambiguous approaches plenty of times. As we all know, Paul loves telling fictional stories in songs, also.

Being a woman, I think "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" was one of the best songs ever written on the subject. Even before this thread was started, I thought many times how right he had been and how right he still is. Just imagine that he wrote the song in the seventies, and basically every word of it is still true. There have been lots of different women's movements, but they have achieved appallingly little. It makes you feel quite frustrated at times. In my mother-in-law's mind, I could win the Nobel Peace Prize and she would still hate me because I'm not the perfect housewife. But personal feelings of being trodden on aside, where John really hit the nail on the head was where he said that if we were out to please men we were bound to fail because they want so many contradictory things from us. No single person can be Mother Teresa, Kim Basinger and Doris Lessing at the same time. Normally, I pay much less attention to the words than to the music, but this one is just GREAT, and I don't think anyone could have expressed his thoughts any better than he did, and he was a MAN! Maybe Yoko (who nearly all of you like to verbally tear into pieces) wasn't such a bad influence at all...

However she limited his scope a lot, made him more paranoid and dependent than ever, made decisions that damaged John´s career, outlawed plenty of John´s real friends and made him inacessible to them, despised Julian Lennon, splurge John´s name and fortune in her ways, ...enough said.No, just one more thing: John would have been MUCH, MUCH better off with someone other than her. A caring, undertanding muse for one...

Let me be blunt. I think Yoko was a horrible influence on John. As for John's words, and the spirit of the song, I don't believe that, in reality, he treated women very well over the course of his lifetime. So it rings as hypocritical to me.

quote:Originally posted by stevew628Let me be blunt. I think Yoko was a horrible influence on John. As for John's words, and the spirit of the song, I don't believe that, in reality, he treated women very well over the course of his lifetime. So it rings as hypocritical to me.

Even if what John said about other men's behaviour was true for himself, this does not mean that the message itself was crap. I do believe it shows a profound understanding of the difficulties between the sexes very uncommon in ordinary males. What's more, most of us don't live up to what we think is right or wrong. We keep catching ourselves doing things we know we shouldn't be doing. The difficult thing is very well summed up in the Spanish expression "predicar con el ejemplo" (preach with the example). Any of us who have children know how hard it can be...

As for the way John treated women, I suppose for the first half of his life what you say is true. But the second half was quite a different story. Yoko was precisely not only his muse, he allowed her to play a much more active part in his life and his creativity. And whereas Julian apparently saw very little of his Dad, for Sean he took a "baby break" or whatever you call it, doing which he was well ahead of his time. I'm sure he himself realized he had made mistakes in his behaviour towards women - some of that is reflected in the song "Woman".

As for Yoko, I keep thinking her role as the "baddie" is greatly exaggerated. I am convinced the Beatles would have split up without her as well. Long before she entered the scene, the group's agony had started, you've only got to watch "Anthology" (Brian Epstein's death, John and George gradually losing interest and getting bored, the end of the tours, long and tedious studio sessions where Ringo claimed he had "learnt how to play chess"...). For me the worst thing she did was that she made him take himself too seriously. His sense of humour of the earlier years gave way to an unpleasant degree of self-importance. In the earlier years, so many times it had been his sense of humour that had kept things from gettng pathetic - when Macca came up with "Yesterday", everybody, including George Martin, was struck with awe - John just went on stage saying "Thank you Ringo, that was wonderful" and even played a practical joke. Later, it seemed to be him who would have needed someone to "get his feet back on the ground".

I know this has absolutely nothing to do with "Mind Games", but it was something I had for a long time wished to write off my mind...

I have never blamed Yoko for the break-up. As you say, it would have happened anyway. That's obvious, I think. They had grown up and away from each other. I judge her more on the way she has treated Julian and many others throughout her post-Beatles life. She's just not my cup-o-tea. You're entitled to your opinion, and I certainly respect that, Cologne Girl.

No disrespect to Yoko but without her famous and talented husband she hasn't really done much except try and keep his music in the stores. When I say she hasn't done much I mean in terms of her own art or creation.

She may have been all that but it's not just her fault. What about John ??? He could have had practically any woman out there, how come he didn't see this?

The one thing I don't like about her is that in the booklet for Lennon Anthology when she talks about the separation (lost weekend) she describes it in a way that makes it seem as if they mau eventually break up for good and their reconcilliation at the Elton John concert was more of an accident, "dragged there by her friend" etc.. when in fact it seems that she had every intention to see John there. Weird.